permaculture

[Marjory <forestgarden@gvtc.com>]

Toby,

I just watched Food Inc. last night and that is a great summary of where 
trust has gotten us.  I can't afford to buy all of the good food my 
family needs from honest farmers, so yes, damn right, I am growing my 
own.  It is something I can do.  It is not a full time job for me, as I 
have other responsabilites and work to do to cover the mortgage, the 
kids, and life. 

It is this simple. 

Yes, I too am wondering if your account has been hacked.

Marjory


Toby Hemenway wrote:
> On May 12, 2010, at 10:28 AM, jamesdavid Sneed wrote:
>
>   
> > That seems so disappointing, an elitist attitude that discourages people from 
> > growing all their own food . . . . I find that independence impossible in 
> > anywhere but the most remote regions, I am returning to those locales, which 
> > to me is the REAL WORLD
> >     
>
> Reality is often more disappointing than dreaming of something we've never tried; yes, my point was indeed to discourage people from the simplistic, near-impossible fantasy that when it gets tough they can just grow all their own food. I hope that idea dies soon; it's a terrible deterrent to facing a real solution. I beg you all: Stop thinking that way!  And, James, when you return to the "real world," of the wild, just remember who made your equipment for you; that's how self-reliant you'll be. The "I'll harvest the wild" dream only insures the destruction of the last wild places.That's anti-permaculture: stay out of the bush, says Mollison, and he's right. With 7 billion people, all wild resources would be depleted in a matter of months. I was recently in Alaska, and kept running into people who thought they'd just hunt after the oil gets scarce. Not with the size of the population of Alaska. That's a horrifying thought: goodbye caribou, elk, deer, bear. 
>
> Growing all your own food is not permaculture. It's subsistence farming. If you love being a farmer, then do it. But if I remember Rain's stories of the Jeavons associate who grew his food for a year, he was working 40-80 hours a week for about 6 months on it, and 20-30 hours in the winter. And he did not have a job that year. That leaves little time for anything else, and ignores the issue of how to pay for land, housing, etc.. Is that what you want? What is the question that "grow your own food" is the answer to? It's probably the least secure and most labor-intensive way to obtain your food. Do you really trust no one else to grow food as well as you can? Or not trust yourself to be able to do something in exchange for it? 
>
> There is nothing in permaculture principles that suggests growing all your own food, or even any 
> food at all. Mollison, in the first pages of Intro to Pc, says it makes more sense to do what you 
> do well and support other people who are good at growing food sustainably. It's not permacultural 
> to limit yourself to "I must grow all my own food." It's permacultural to say "I 
> must take care of my food needs sustainably" and connect with your local community around 
> food in ways that create mutual support and a whole system. The lone farmer working to feed 
> him/herself is bad design. That's a critical function being supported only one way. An injury, 
> and you and your family starve. And the food bandits will hit you first, all alone out there, 
> long before they will attack the community where a few members farm and the others can stand 
> guard.
>
> The "must grow all my own food" mindset is just more of the rugged 
> individualist, go-it-alone attitude that infects our culture. It's grounded in a lack 
> of trust. It's where we go first because it seems doable, easier than creating a 
> community, easier than participating and trusting in a network, but it's not a 
> solution. It's like buying a water filter when your tapwater isn't clean. It provides 
> personal safety but ignores the problem. Except that in food, it's a fantasy solution: 
> hardly anyone is really going to grow all their own food, but I think we're comforted 
> by imagining that we can. It's a natural early but simplistic response, and we need to 
> move beyond it to more sophisticated and realistic thinking that assesses the 
> possibilities and resources instead of running away to our back yard.
>
> I don't see more than a tiny percentage of people returning to growing most 
> of their food. It is simply too radical a shift from present systems; there 
> is no direct path there unless your scenario is rapid rupture of societal 
> fabric followed by utter fear and atomization, while there are many direct 
> paths to many other effective food-security scenarios. For one, I think there 
> will be a huge increase in the number of market farmers specializing in a 
> modest variety of crops, some to eat, but most for income or trade.
>
> BTW, I believe the people on Tikopia, like all Polynesians, got most of their 
> protein and a large part of their other food from the sea. So that enlarges 
> their footprint from 1.8 square miles to hundreds of square miles. To support 
> 800 people from a square mile is impossible. Once again, that's running to a 
> simple answer--they just grew their own!--that misses the real pattern.
>
> Grow food if you enjoy it and are good at it. If not, design a better way to 
> meet your food needs. That would be permaculture.
>
> Toby
> http://patternliteracy.com
>
>
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